PARENT FORWARD: Reading helps both child and parent

The educator Dr. J. Richard Gentry calls it "the 30 million word advantage."

Now what parent wouldn't want to give that edge to his or her child?

The American Academy of Pediatrics stresses the importance for all parents to begin reading to a child from birth: It's just as important as feeding and caring for a child. The academy recommends parents make it a fun daily activity.

Waiting until school begins may put a child at a serious disadvantage.

"Let's see, there are 16 chapters, and if we read four a day, we'll finish it by Saturday," said my son, Steve, to his 6-year-old son, who was cuddled up in his lap with his stuffed dog, Rocky Colorado, and his favorite blue blanket.

My son was reading aloud from "Deltora Quest: The Shifting Sands," by Emily Rodda, a story of monsters and magic. Although the book was above Collin's reading level, he eagerly picked it off the library shelf.

"Make pictures in your head as I read," said my son to my grandson.

The free book on loan was to be dropped in the return drop box before he left Colorado for Massachusetts. A few nights before, Collin and I walked down the cowboy-style boardwalks and into the Grand Lake Library, where he chose 14 books; summer reading highly suggested by the Lunenburg school system for all entering first-graders.

Gentry, author of "Raising Confident Readers: How to Teach Your Child to Read and Write - Baby to Age 7," describes the activity of positive shared reading as an "aha! moment" for parents and children.

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Gentry adds that when parents realize reading a book with their child is something they can do and essentially give for the cost of a few bonding and learning minutes put aside each day as a special ritual, parents feel really good about it.

I spoke with Gentry from his home in Mobile, Ala., recently about the exciting neuroscience behind reading and what happens when parent and child engage in the activity of opening a book. Synapses fire off in the brain as words, pictures, and a parent/child dialogue begins to form millions of conceptual connections, vital connections that give a child a major advantage when he or she enters the classroom for the first time.

"The neuroscience is revolutionizing reading education. Everything points to the fact that reading is so much more important than we realized," he said.

I couldn't agree more with Gentry, that reading is not only fun and a way to bond with your child. I would also wager it is a way to prepare a child for school and even for life. I guess it takes a whole lot of science to prove something that many parents and educators already knew: Children are intelligent beings. And to begin reading as soon as possible is to make the path of learning so much easier for a child.

As Gentry puts it, "Babies 0-3 are little geniuses." I would also add, "especially, when parents lovingly foster that process of curiosity and learning from the get-go through reading and talking."

Educators, scientists, and the medical community know that reading carries over to academic success. Yet some parents still haven't gotten the memo that reading is critical, not an exclusive activity enjoyed by geeks, nerds, bookworms and wicked smart people, but for anyone who is curious about the world and how it works. And what child is not eager to learn things?

Reading is something that is accessible to all parents of all children if we take advantage of our resources. It's time to take reading by the horns and shine a brilliant light on the idea that books are a wonderful way to help us move in the world. I don't care where you come from, how you did in school as a child, or where you're going, your child will have a better chance if you adopt reading as a sacred, secure, and stress-free ritual in your child's life.

Until parents begin to look at books and library cards as a cool thing, as an opportunity, as a fun experience for both child and parent, those children will be saddled with something that looks more like a 30 million-word disadvantage. And if you ask me, that's just not a fair legacy to leave an innocent child.

Give me one child who does not like visiting a big room filled with books of all kinds for the choosing, and I will show you a parent who has most certainly poisoned the well of understanding in some way.

When we read, and when we are read to, the brain is being stimulated. Gentry hopes parents will note that a child's language comes directly and exclusively in the formative years of life from the parents who are in every way that child's very first teacher. Powerful connections are being made.
Gentry absolutely hits the nail on the head when he says that reading aloud and talking to the baby puts data into the baby's brain. It is as simple as the more words spoken, read and heard, the more data accessed later by a growing child.

"A 1996 study by authors Betty Hart and Todd Risley pointed out the meaningful differences in the everyday experiences of a younger child children from families, who were talked to, reading the same favorite books over and over, which is normal and appropriate for young children, like "Goodnight Moon," by Margaret Wise Brown for instance, were given a wonderful think-language concept development activity. And those kids who had the experience of being read to had 30 million more words there. We think in words," he said.

Reading gives a significant academic benefit to the child. But again, a child can only know this if a parent takes a small child by the hand and visits the library and then takes that same child up into his lap to crack open a book together.

"There's nothing better than books. The child may be carrying that beloved book around in the first years of life. The learning process spirals up," he said, adding, "being able to watch the parent's engage through cuddling and bonding is a happy time for both the parent and the child, and later on, they are able to talk about these feelings and emotions- it is a wonderful experience," Gentry said.

When parents read to 1- and 2-year-olds, Gentry encourages parents to begin to talk about the print on the page, to make reference to sounds and letters.

"You can track with your fingers, look at words, 'Here's cat. Do you know how to spell cat?' These are print concepts, and these kids who don't get this parent-child reading time don't know what 'spell' means or what a letter is when they arrive at school. It's important to talk about print feature starting very young," he said.

It's true that a bedtime reading routine works well and it only takes a few minutes of time. Gentry rhetorically asks, "What tired parent doesn't want to snuggle up with the child they love and spend some bonding time at the end of a long day?"

I smiled at Gentry's remarks, which harkened me back to a phone call I shared with my daughter, Natalie, just a few days earlier. My soon-to-be-5-year-old grandson, Robert, is about to start school in the fall.

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